The production of absorbent products such as sanitary napkins is a highly developed art that encompasses numerous techniques for cutting and assembling various layers of materials into absorbent product. As with any consumer product produced in high volumes, two considerations are of paramount importance, speed and efficiency. Speed is enhanced by making the production process as continuous as possible. Ideally rolls of material are fed into one end of a production system and finished product emerges. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,432,746 discloses a web segmenting apparatus that cuts a running web into discrete articles. Other systems for cutting webs either continuously or discontinuously are known.
One aspect of efficiency is the full utilization of raw materials, thus sheet material should be cut to minimize excess design scrap or trim waste. However, many types of absorbent products are cut to shapes specifically chosen to conform to the parts of the body to which they are applied. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,488,778 (Goujon et al.) discloses the pattern required to fabricate panties. As seen in FIGS. 2-3 of that patent, however, there is a great deal of material wasted when this pattern is cut.
There is therefore a continuing need to provide efficient processes for making absorbent articles. Moreover, it would be desirable to construct absorbent articles with as little waste material as possible. It is therefore an object of this invention to provide absorbent articles and apparatus and methods for making them that utilize materials efficiently and that lend themselves to being operated continuously.